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Collaboration in Contracts
Previously, stakeholders involved in the contracting/sourcing process used to communicate via external tools such as Email, Skype, etc. Managing these conversations that involved multiple stakeholders and multiple discussions was a cumbersome task. With this release, ICM has eliminated the need to use external tools and created a dedicated space available within the Agreement itself.
To collaborate, multiple stakeholders involved in the contracting/sourcing process can:
- Use the Collaboration tab available inside the Agreement Details
- Provision an internal/external Team member to communicate with other internal or external team member(s) by creating Topics and posting messages in it
- Provision users to send and receive attachments along with the message
- Provision users can send messages to all members at the same time or to specific team members
- Provision users to mark the Topic as closed once the discussion is concluded
- Send Email notification to participants when messages are posted on the topic
This can be achieved by setting the "Enable Collaboration" flag to "Yes" on the Agreement Contract Type, which displays a Collaboration tab on the Agreement Details page in the collapsible left navigation pane.
Configuring Collaboration for Contract Types
To enable Collaboration for Contract Types:
You have to set the "Enable Collaboration" flag to "Yes" while
- Creating a Contract Type OR
- Updating an already existing Contract Type.
Configuring on Creating Agreement Contract Type
1. Click the "Configure" tile or menu on the navigation bar at the top.
2. Click the "Contract Type" sub-menu. The "Contract Types" index page opens listing all the Contract Types in grid view.
6. Enter all the details on the "Details" tab.
7. Toggle the "Enable Collaboration" flag to "Yes" to enable Collaboration at the Agreement level.
8. Click "Next". The "Attributes" tab opens.
9. Enter the details in the remaining Attributes, Association, Display Preference, Team, and Verify tabs to send the Collaboration Contract Type to Approved state.
Configuring on Editing Agreement Contract Type
Alternatively, you can edit an already Existing Contract Type to enable the Collaboration tab:
1. Navigate to "Contract Types" index page from "Configure" > "Contract Types".
2. On the "Contract Types" index page, click the eye icon 
on the last column. The "Contract Types" details page opens.
2. Click "Edit" on the top in the far-right of the title bar.
3. Set the "Enable Collaboration" flag to "Yes".
Viewing Contract Types with Collaboration Enabled
You can view all the Contract Types having the "Enable Collaboration" flag set to true by using "Refine View" as shown in the screenshot below:
Creating a New Topic and Sending Messages
Creating a Topic by Internal User and Sending Messages to another Internal User
1. Create an Agreement from the "Agreements" navigation menu on the top with the "Contract Type Name" selected among the Contract Types whose "Enable Collaboration" flag is true (Refer to the screenshot in the section "Viewing Contract Types with Collaboration Enabled" on this page for such Contract Types). The user is redirected to the newly created Agreement's Details page.
See the "Creating an Agreement" section under Agreements for more details on creating Agreements.
2. Click the "Collaboration" tab on the collapsible left navigation pane of the Agreement’s Details page. The Collaboration page opens in the right pane indicating that there is no topic for you to collaborate and a “Start A New Topic” button.
3. Click the "Start A New Topic" button if no topics exist or click the "New Topic" plus icon on the top-left if topics already exist. The "Create a New Topic" drawer opens.
You can now select participants who will collaborate and be able to send and receive messages for a topic related to the agreement. For example, let’s collaborate with an Internal user, CLM Admin.
4. By default "Select Team Members" option is selected for the "Participants" field to collaborate. If you want to collaborate with all team members at the same time, you can select the broadcast option of "All Team Members".
. The Select Participant(s) drawer opens. For example, let’s collaborate with an Internal user CLM Admin.
5. You can choose to keep the topic confidential from other users by toggling the "Do you want to mark this topic as Confidential" flag to Yes. In that case, Internal users that are part of the Topic conversation will not be able to view and reply to the Topic.
6. Enter the "Subject" and "Message" for the Topic.
The Topic is listed with the following details:
- Count of participants
- Who initiated the conversation,
- Who took the last action on the Topic,
- Date
On the right pane, you can view the details of the topic's message and the replies. If the Topic is broadcasted to all team members a broadcast icon is displayed and the "Reply All" button appears beside "Reply". You can close a Topic if no further communication is required using the “Close Topic” button.
Creating a Topic by the Internal User and Sending Message to the External User
Let’s create a Topic and add Lee Yen Po as an External user.
1. Click on more action 3 dots on the right-top of the Agreement Details page.
2. Click "Collaborate". The "Select User" drawer opens. Let’s select the external user Lee Yen Po.
3. Click "Add". The Agreement collaborated successfully message is displayed, and the External user is added to the Team.
4. Click the "Collaboration" tab on the left collapsible navigation pane on the Agreement’s Details page.
5. Click "New Topic" on the top-right corner. The "Create a New Topic" drawer opens.
6. Follow the same steps as for adding an internal user.
7. Click "Create". The Topic is created. The participants can view this topic in the Topics window of the Collaboration page and the body of the message at the right.
Replying Messages with Reply and Reply All
Now let’s see how the provisioned external user Lee Yen Po can respond to the message.
1. Click "Reply" to respond to the selected message for one or more participants and "Reply All" to broadcast the message to all participants.
Based on confidentiality, a message posted by an external user will be visible to participants or other team members, but not external users.
2. Click "Send". A notification email will be sent to all the recipients of this Topic. The authorized ICM user can see the external user response in the Topics window of the Collaboration tab.
If the topic message is sent to an external team member or members, a dropdown "All User View" for selecting the user view appears beside the topic name on the top-left. Collaboration details with the specific external users can be displayed by selecting the external user from the dropdown.
Searching Messages in Topics
A user can search messages across topics using the Search tab available in the Collaboration window.
To search messages in a topic:
Enter the keyword in the Search for Messages field. For example, let’s search the word - Can. All the topics where the message contains the searched criteria are rendered in the search result along the search word is highlighted.
Closing the Topics
An Internal user can close the topic when the discussion/conversation is concluded. Once closed, the user cannot reply to a conversation or reopen the topic.
To close a topic:
1. Click "Close Topic" on the far-right to end any Topic conversation. A message is displayed indicating that once you closed the topic, you can no longer post any new messages on this topic.
2. Click "Yes". The Topic is now closed.
The message is displayed in the message window indicating the name of the user who closed the topic along with the date and time.
